The impact of road pricing on accidents: a note on Milan

This paper aims to evaluate the effects of a road pricing scheme in Milan (the Ecopass) on accidents. As the policy was introduced in January 2008, we exploit this exogenous variation to analyse the trend of the time series of the number of accidents, the number of injuries and deaths and in different areas through a regression discontinuity design approach. We find evidence of an overall reduction in accidents in the whole city (−16 %), with a more pronounced effect in the treated area (−18.8 %). The effect on severity of accidents is limited as only a significant reduction in the number of injuries could be detected, whereas no effect was found for the number of deaths